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| Harry Findlay - Professional sports-Bettor |
"Nowadays, some casinos even have two zeroes on the roulette wheel. Anyone playing them should be certified. But gambling on a Champions League match, a Premier League match, you can win." This, he explains, is because modern betting exchanges take a far lower proportion of their punters' stakes in profit. "There is no margin, it's about 2 per cent.
Findlay famously said he’d ’found a new way to print money’ on the 1998 football World Cup by betting on Asian Handicaps. Harry recalls the story: “I was penniless, 200 grand in debt,” he remembers. “I sold the deeds of the house in Sheffield, sold Kay’s car. I had about 90 grand to bet with. After five matches, I was 70, 80 grand behind, near enough down to the last bet I could have. But Mum’s house was waiting to go next, because I knew I would win. And by the end of the World Cup I had won £2m.”
One of his biggest loses was in 2007 when he lost £2.5m on the All Blacks in the Rugby World Cup.
“Don’t mention Martina Hingis to me,” he cried. “Ruined my life when she lost to Iva Majoli in the French Open final. Wiped me off the face of the earth. Three or four times I’ve been all-in. Milk Cup. I remember that. Me and my mum borrowed 1,200 quid – which was a lot of money 20 years ago – to put on Watford to beat Everton in the cup because we knew Everton would play a reserve side. We had £650 on the draw and £550 on Watford to win. We were both at the game to watch. Watford were 1-0 up in the 89th minute and Everton won 2-1. As my mum opened the car door afterwards, she said: ‘What are we going to do now, son?’ We were penniless. That’s what it was like in the old days.
These days bets from his home office which is fully equipped with a number of TV screens and monitors often with different sporting events on at the same time. As well as being a professional gambler Harry was also an owner. He jointly owned the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Denman. Big Fella Thanks was another of his co-owned horses who he named after his beloved greyhound 1999 Coursing Derby winning Big Fella.
Findlay won an appeal in 2010 to have his 6month ban overturned for a breach of BHA betting regulations. He had bet on one of his horses, Gullible Gordon, to lose in two races. However (BHA) accepted he bet more on the horse to win and had no corrupt motive.
In the first race, Gullible Gordon, an odds-on favourite, was well beaten. Findlay bet £80,000 on the horse winning and £17,000 on it losing and came out with a net loss of £62,000.
The horse, a 4-6 favourite, won the second race and Findlay backed him to the tune of £64,000 but also laid the horse off at £32,000. He came out with a profit of £35,000.
Harry said after that he would turn his back on UK racing after that. He estimates winning more than $1 million betting on Black Caviar and Frankel though!
Findlay's Quotes
On backing odds-on
“There’s no difference between getting 1-2 about a 1-4 chance and getting 4-1 about a 2-1 chance. People who say ‘I won’t bet odds-on’, they’re just idiots. When you want to bet an odds-on shot, you can get on – when you want to bet a big-priced one, you can’t.”On why you shouldn’t hedge
“When you pick a 20-1 shot to win the Grand National, don’t have £200 at 20′s and then go and lay £600 at 5-2 and, when it wins, get £2,500. If you believe that 20-1 shot, have £200 at 20′s and then go and have another £300 at 14′s and then £400 at 10′s and then, when it goes off 5-2 or 11-4, don’t hedge if you still fancy it.”On pensions
Don’t get him started on pensions. No part of him approves of putting money away on the off-chance you might see it with knobs on at the age of 65. “I mean, you’ve got to live to be 65 anyway, and that’s only an 8-13 chance.”Philosophizing
"If I were leaving school now, the chances of ending up behind bars are the same as me skiing for Britain in the London Olympics. It only happened because of all the lies and kid-ology that used to go on with betting. Nobody can get [bets] on with bookmakers, because when you win you get closed down. Now it's all up front. We're now living in the real world. Press that button on Betfair and let's see how good you are. Simple. There's no myths or lies any more, it's all fact."He also believes that direct, accountable trading via the internet betting exchanges is taking the carpet up on the cheats, and he colorfully repaints some of the turf's most honored names as arrant frauds. "At the end of the day, it don't matter how big your house is," he says. "Nurses and teachers working for nothing, they're the real legends. If you cheat, what kind of buzz is there, conning all that lot?"
A mass betting market can only be sustained by trust, and that is why these are boom years in football betting. "Its honesty and integrity puts the Premier League on a sporting level almost beyond compare, globally," he says. "Everyone knows that if Bolton play Fulham on a Monday night, it's going to be 100 per cent straight. They know that in Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, China, places with a better understanding of mathematics in relation to gaming. And it puts every Premier League game on a par only with the Euros, the World Cup, or the later stages of the Champions League."
And big markets are crucial to Findlay's system, which he succinctly describes as "glory or the bullet". Among the high priests of betting, he is a lone voice in preaching the value in backing favorites.
"The real money is in the short prices," he says. "I know I'm never going to make more than 4 per cent [on turnover] so if I don't bet in tens of thousands, I'm not going to make much of a living. And the only way you can bet real big, in terms of getting on, is on the short prices.
"Sometimes it is crushing. That last-minute goal. Good friends have a very small share in what I do, so you know they're hurting too. People trivialize gambling. But to someone else, 20 quid can be just as big a bet as some of these I'm having. Remember, I've done it from both ends. Gamblers lend each other money, we'll do anything for each other. I have read a lot of the great philosophers, and gambling is a very good parody of life. A lot of the rules come out the same."
And finally... going Bankrupt!
